Category: Environment

I see Magnifico caught this story in Four at Four, but tossing this post out there for depth’s sake.

We have to break the law in order to save it.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration will use its authority to bypass more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest U.S. border by the end of this year, federal officials said Tuesday.

Invoking the two legal waivers – which Congress authorized – will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of the Homeland Security Department building 267 miles of fencing in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, according to officials familiar with the plan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly about it.

More below the fold…

Al Gore is about to step forward, back into the news again.  The Washington Post reports

Former vice president Al Gore will launch a three-year, $300 million campaign Wednesday aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.

Gore sees a need to educate the public about what is needed to address the climate crisis.  I am quite impressed at the plans for various ways of getting the information out to the public.  The key need is to have real policy changes be enacted.

The Alliance for Climate Protection’s “we” campaign will employ online organizing and television advertisements on shows ranging from “American Idol” to “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” It highlights the extent to which Americans’ growing awareness of global warming has yet to translate into national policy changes, Gore said in an hour-long phone interview last week. He said the campaign, which Gore is helping to fund, was undertaken in large part because of his fear that U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to curb the human-generated emissions linked to climate change.

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

The first cities have dimmed their lights for what is hoped to be an annual awareness event on climate change: Earth Hour, an hour of darkness to remind the populace of the impact of global warming.

The movement began a year ago in Australia and has now spread world-wide, with the first cities already dimming their lights between 8-9pm local time:

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — The iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge went dark Saturday night as Sydney became the world’s first major city to turn off its lights for this year’s Earth Hour, a global campaign to raise awareness about climate change.

Thousands of homes were dark for an hour in Christchurch, New Zealand. The famed Wat Arun Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand switched off its lights.

The three major cities were among 23 worldwide, along with 300 smaller towns, taking part in Earth Hour — a campaign by environmental group WWF to highlight the need to conserve energy and fight global warming.

“This provides an extraordinary symbol and an indication that we can be part of the solution” to global warming, Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett told Sky News television.

More below the jump…

Living in California, I’m always seeing bumper stickers that say, “Keep Tahoe Blue”.. and well……. looks like they’re losing.

RENO, Nev. – A new study predicts water circulation in Lake Tahoe is being dramatically altered by global warming, threatening the lake’s delicate ecosystem and famed clear waters.

The University of California, Davis study said one likely consequence is warmer lake temperatures that will mean fewer cold-water native fish and more invasive species – like carp, largemouth bass and bluegill.

“What we expect is that deep mixing of Lake Tahoe’s water layers will become less frequent, even nonexistent, depleting the bottom waters of oxygen,” said Geoffrey Schladow, director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center at U.C. Davis.

snip

The changes, the study concluded, could turn Tahoe’s famed cobalt-blue waters to a murky green in about a decade.

A decade. Sad. I hope they’re wrong but we’ll find out soon enough, right? I’ve never really liked going in the water because it’s always crowded (herds of tourists…bleh), but the views from the mountains up above are absolutely beautiful. It’ll probably still be nice, but the fact that we’re damaging one of the landmarks that defines the Sierras is just devastating.

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

The National Ice and Snow Institute (NISDC) has released a report documenting a dramatic and troubling collapse of a large portion (nine times the size of Manhattan) of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

Satellite imagery from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder reveals that a 13,680 square kilometer (5,282 square mile) ice shelf has begun to collapse because of rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad plate of permanent floating ice on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula, about 1,000 miles south of South America. In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, rising by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade. NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, “We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up.”

The ice shelf began its visible collapse on February 28th, when a huge iceberg (41 x 2.5 kilometers – 25.5 by 1.5 miles) broke away, triggering a wider collapse of 405 square kilometers (160 square miles) of the shelf…

Photo Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

The rest of the article, more photos, videos, satellite views and animation at this link

I realize that this type of story has been reviewed endlessly, but I still think that it cannot be opposed too often.  This is not the answer.

Ethanol!  Ethanol!  Rah!  Rah!  Rah!

The cheers go up we can finally end our dependence on foreign oil.  Now that is a one pound bag of manure, which they are selling to the people.  Guess what!?  They are buying this crap (pun intended).  As long as we allow the oil companies to make obscene profits, you will NEVER be weaned from foreign oil.  Why is that?  Ethanol cannot be transported through pipelines, for it will pick up impurities like water.  So, the only way to transport it is in trucks.   Now guess what?  Trucks use diesel and that is another pollutant.  Ethanol IS NOT the answer, sports fans.

Let us talk about how environmentally friendly ethanol is, NOT!  A Stanford study showed that ethanol is at least as polluting as gasoline and could be more so.  The burning of ethanol produces more lung damaging ozone than the burning of gasoline.  Another polluting factor of ethanol is that farmers will use a nitrogen based fertilizer which will enter into the water supply, killing marine life and such.  This alone should make it unwise to push the use of corn as an alternative.  But who cares, it is all about who makes the profits, not what it will do to the environment.

Now let us talk about corn prices.  Ethanol refiners use huge amounts of corn and with that food prices will go up and up. Corn is used in food production from feed for the cattle that make our steaks to the syrup for our soft drinks.  As the demand for ethanol rise, so will the price of our food.   The more corn that is planted the less other crops are raised and this will also add to the price of food.  Nothing about ethanol is a good.

Corn is not even the best source of ethanol.  Sugar cane is and it produces 8 times more energy than it uses to make.  Corn, however, the ratio is 1.3 to 1.  This basically means that corn produces a little more energy than it consumes in the refining process.  Not an efficient product.

The US is importing foreign oil so that ethanol can be produced and distributed.  The only thing that is being accomplished by the production of ethanol is we are putting the grocery store in competition with the gas station for the use of the corn.

Ethanol is nothing new!  It was used in Ford’s original Model T and it was considered in the 1970’s during the oil embargo.  If ethanol is inefficient and costly why is it even being considered?  That is the easiest question to answer-PROFITS!  No one in the oil business wants to eliminate out dependence on foreign oil.  Why would they shoot themselves in the ass?  Answer-they will not cut off their supply of profit.  

This is not an answer to dependency, it is however an answer to oil companies retaining their profit margin, for an additive will still need a supply of the original product and that translates into continued exploitation by the oil companies.

In a press release I received today, Friends of the Earth Action criticized both leading Democratic presidential candidates for their recent anti-environment, pro-coal comments.  

Senator Hillary Clinton expressed enthusiasm for coal and failed to condemn mountaintop removal during an interview yesterday on West Virginia Public Radio.  Today, Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech in West Virginia advocating so-called “clean coal” as a solution to global warming.

Both are wrong.

“These comments raise serious questions about whether the Democratic candidates are as committed to clean energy as they claim to be,” Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder said.  “Coal is not clean-period.  And it is especially dirty and damaging when it is mined through the mountaintop removal process, in which mountains are literally blown to pieces, wiping vast swaths of nature off the map and polluting valleys, streams and rivers.”

So much has been going on at THE ENVIRONMENTALIST, it’s been difficult to keep up.  I’ve copied a few excepts from articles I found most interesting (some I worked on, others not).  

Here are some excerpts:

An Early Spring

Forty-six years ago, author Rachel Carson’s seminal work, SILENT SPRING, alerted the world of damage to the environment by the pesticide DDT. It is a book that is widely considered to be the genesis of modern environmental movement and that may be true, as it raised public awareness as to the dangers of pollution to the eco-system.

Now, a new kind of silent spring is upon us; an early spring that confusing to vulnerable plant and wildlife that many may not survive its untimely arrival.  

Barack Obama: The Prejudice of Predefinition

I listened to Barack Obama’s historic speech in awe of the raw truth of his words and recognition of the dignity with which he faces the obvious attempts by others to predefine him as something singular — a black candidate — rather than as a multi-cultural and gifted American who presents a unique opportunity for both his country and the world.

I understand what his opponents are trying to do. The prejudice of predefinition. If one can be defined, then they are somehow ‘less than’…

Cats may lower heart attack risk

A new study from the University of Minnesota has discovered that people who have kept cats have a 40% lower risk of heart attack than their non-cat friendly counterparts.

More below the jump…

The world’s glaciers are losing mass at record rates according to the United Nations. Preliminary calculations just completed for 2006 show that the rate of glacial melting increased from the previous record rate in 2003. Glaciers have not retreated this rapidly since prehistoric time over 5000 years ago.

By FishOutofWater

Water supplies and agriculture, especially in China, India and Pakistan are threatened by the rapid loss of mountain glaciers. Water supplies in California and the western U.S. are diminishing as glaciers and winter snowpack decline.

Note: x-posted in Orange.

I have generally lurked here rather than post here because environmental writing doesn’t seem to be a primary focus here. However, many of my former readers are now here so I thought it might be a good time to make a first post here. Environmental matters aren’t discussed enough on the political blogs, in my opinion. The planet has been taken for granted by people for far too long. We can not escape the environmental consequences of our choices.

The glacial retreat story was covered extensively in the European press and virtually ignored in the U.S. One reason Americans are so ignorant is the lack of media coverage of environmental matters. Blogs also tend to have less discussion of the environment here. I hope this blog is interested in environmental discussions.

GLACIER RETREAT ACCELERATES (over)

Water is essential for life.

But, America and much of the rest of the world is running short of clean, freshwater.

Thinking about that retirement RV or just wanting to take the family on the road, but worried about gas prices?  Maybe a green RV is right for you.  The baby boomer retiree explosion may very well provide the buyers market to make green RV’s a common site on our nations highways.

Cross posted in EENR.